Educated in Dublin, the Irish painter Frederic Burton moved to London in 1858, where he joined the pre-Raphaelite circle around Dante Gabriele Rossetti. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and then in 1874, Burton became the third director of the National Gallery.

Around the time Burton settled in London, the British writer Mary Ann Evans (1818-1890) began publishing under the pseudonym of George Eliot. Her romantic novel Romola was released in Cornhill Magazine from 1862 to 1863, and with the proceeds she and her life partner George Henry Lewes moved to a house on Regent’s Park.

In 1864, Eliot wrote about seeing a painting by Burton, in which a mailed knight is kissing the arm of a woman “by an uncontrollable movement.” The work was Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864), now in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. “[It] might have been made the most vulgar thing in the world,” she continued, “[but] the artist has raised it to the highest pitch of refined emotion.” The following year, she arranged to have Burton make her portrait, which is now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. Princeton holds a preliminary sketch.

William Blake (1757-1827), The Landing of Julius Caesar, [1793] and The Landing of Brutus, [1793]. Watercolors finished in ink. Provenance: Colonel Gould Weston. Robert H. Taylor Collection (RHT), Rare Books and Special Collections. Gift of Robert H. Taylor, Class of 1930.

On October 10, 1793, William Blake issued a prospectus of upcoming work. He had completed America, A Prophecy and was about to publish Europe, A Prophecy. One title Blake described was The History of England, which was to be a small book of engravings, priced three shillings. No copies are known to exist. The twenty historical engravings would have included both “The Landing of Brutus” and “The Landing of Julius Caesar.” The Robert Taylor collection at Princeton University holds Blake’s watercolor studies for these two plates.

According to the Cambridge Companion to William Blake (Marquand PR4147 .C36 2003), “Most of Blake’s early drawings appear to come from incomplete or abortive projects, but one can observe the emergence of some of his mature themes. His series of watercolors of The History of England (Burlin 51-69) was begun at least as early as 1780, for in that year he exhibited The Death of Earl Goodwin (Burlin 60) at the Royal Academy. Though the series was never finished - he was evidently still thinking of engraving some of the designs as late as 1793 - some themes can be discerned.

The British Museum holds a copy of the watercolor The Death of Earl Goodwin.

Collector Robert Taylor not only acquired a first edition of the Gaelic poem cycle Fingal, published by James Macpherson in 1762 but also purchased a large watercolor by the British artist Richard Westall depicting one scene from this epic.

To put Westall in an art historical context, Thomas Rowlandson entered the Royal Academy at the Old Somerset house in 1772, William Blake followed in 1779, and Westall enrolled in 1785. He painted works for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, which was established in 1786 and later, served as Queen Victoria’s drawing master.

Westall illustrated many works of literature and we hold dozens of books decorated with his plates including works by John Milton, William Shakespeare, and Walter Scott. This undated watercolor illustrates an episode from Ossian’s poem, in which Fingal meets Coban-Carglas, daughter of King Torcul-Torno.

See also: James Macpherson (1736-1796), Fingal, An Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books: Together with Several Other Poems, Composed by Ossian the Son of Fingal. Translated from the Gaelic language, by James Macpherson … (London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1762). Robert H. Taylor Collection (RHT) 18th-1010 Oversize

The Philadelphia-born artist D. C. Johnston was proficient as a lithographer and engraver. He drew, etched, and published this narrative broadside, which uses a simple nursery rhyme to make a powerful condemnation of slavery. The ‘house’ in the title refers to the slave pen seen in the first vignette. ‘Jeff’ is Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) the President of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.

Here are the twelve texts:
1.This is the house that Jeff built.
2.This is the cotton, by rebels, called king (Tho’ call’d by Loyalists no such thing) that lay in the house that Jeff built.
3.These are the field chattels that made cotton king, (tho’ call’d by Loyalists no such thing), that lay in the house that Jeff built.

4.These are the chattels babes, mothers, and men, to be sold by the head, in the slave pen;— A part of the house that Jeff built.
5.This is the thing, by some call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span; In and out of the house that Jeff built.
6.These are the shackles, for those who suppose their limbs are their own from fingers to toes; And are prone to believe say all that you can, that they shouldn’t be sold by that thing call’d a man; Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
7.These buy the slaves, both male and female, and sell their own souls to a boss with a tail, who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
8.Here the slave breeder parts with his own flesh to a trader down south, in the heart of secesh, thus trader and breeder secure without fail, the lasting attachment of him with a tail, who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adult’s of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
9.This is the scourge by some call’d the cat, Stout in the handle, and nine tails to that, t’is joyous to think that the time’s drawing near when the cat will no longer cause chattels to fear, nor the going, going, gone of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
10.Here the slave driver in transport applies, nine tails to his victim, nor heeds her shrill cries, Alas! that a driver with nine tails his own, should be slave to a driver who owns only one, albeit he owns that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
11.Here’s the arch rebel Jeff whose infamous course, has bro’t rest to the plow and made active the hearse, and invoked on his head every patriots curse, spread ruin and famine to stock the slave pen, and furnish employment to that thing among men, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
12.But Jeff’s infamous house is doom’d to come down, so says Uncle Sam and so said John Brown. — With slave pen and auction shackles, driver and cat, together with buyer and seller and breeder and that, most loathsome of bipeds by some call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.

Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), Spirits at work- Joanna conceiving- ie- blowing up Shiloh, 1814. Etching. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process. Published as the frontispiece for Scourge v.8 (July 1814). Note the book Joanna has been reading is The Art of Humbugging, chapter one. Above her head is a bag labeled: Passports to Heaven, five shillings each or two for Seven.

Joanna Southcott (or Southcote) (1750-1814), wrote prophecies “at the command of the spirit of God.” From 1792 to her death, Southcott attracted many followers as well as skeptics. Her most important prophecy came in 1813 when she announced that she would give birth to a messiah, called The Shiloh. Southcott was sixty-four years old but spent the last year of her life expecting a child by “the power of the Most High,” who was to “rule the nations with a rod of iron.”

Throughout the year, caricatures and cartoons were published ridiculing her. Here are two examples from July and November 1814. A baby was supposedly born in December and Southcott died soon after.

Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), Delivering a Prophetess, 1814. Etching. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process. Published in Scourge v.8 (November 1814). Joanna’s water has broken and four doctors prepare for the birth of The Shiloh. A ‘Preacher to the Virgin Johanna’ is bottling her water for later sale. Quotes come from Macbeth and the three midwives are reminiscent of the three witches who made prophecies in that play.

How would you like the ability to see another person’s secret thoughts? Even if it is a fictional person. This is the basis of a graphic novella called SVK (special viewing kit). The small paperback is written by Warren Ellis with art by Matt “D’Israeli” Brooker, foreword by William Gibson, and published by the London design firm BERG (Jack Schulze). Their publicity describes the book as “a story about cities, technology, and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.”

The trick comes when the detective story is illuminated with a small ultraviolet light (included with the book) and the secret thoughts of various characters appear. More than a gimmick, the invisible text moves the plot along, exposing character strengths and weaknesses you wouldn’t otherwise know.

The leading character is a security consultant named Thomas Woodwind. “A man of six feet or so, quite lean, with a good Patrick Stewart-ish skull fuzzed with very short pale hair. Paranoid eyes. Tending to very long black coats, with poacher’s pockets sewn on the inside. A bluetooth earpiece cupping each ear. Black gloves - no fingerprints, reduction of epithelials.”

Also included is a short essay by comic historian Paul Gravett on the history of the word balloon, as well as at least one ultraviolet advertisement. I wonder if you get a discount for advertising in invisible ink?

The Robert H. Taylor Collection includes eighteen drawers holding 112 prints, drawings, and watercolors. These works were placed on deposit at the Princeton University Library in 1972 and received as a bequest in 1985. Thanks to Mark R. Farrell, curator of the Robert H. Taylor Collection, for his help with this post.

The collection includes two works by the British artist John Martin, who was fifty-eight when he completed the watercolor shown here. At this time in his life, Martin split his focus between art and ecology. He founded the Metropolitan Sewage Manure Company in 1845 to manage the human waste flowing into the Thames and redirect it to agricultural use. Martin completed a number of small watercolors during this period rather than the mammoth oil paintings for which he was (and is) best known.

The collector Robert Taylor loved the British writers of the 19th century. It is somewhat surprising then to find an artist in his collection who was disliked by so many contemporary writers. William Thackeray called Martin’s work “huge, queer and tawdry to our eyes, but very much admired by the public.” The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that Martin was “a poor creature” and exchanged nasty remarks about him in letters to Wordsworth. John Ruskin described Martin’s work as “mere manufacture, as much makeable to order as a tea-tray or a coal-scuttle.”

Romantic Landscape, 1836. Pen and ink wash drawing.

An exhibition of Martin’s paintings has just closed at Tate Britain, where his work faced the same mixed reaction as in the 19th century. “Hugely popular in his time,” notes the Tate press release, “Martin was derided by the Victorian Art establishment as a ‘people’s painter’, for although he excited mass audiences with his astounding scenes of judgement and damnation, to critics it was distasteful. In a sense ahead of this time, his paintings - full of rugged landscapes and grandiose theatrical spectacle - have an enduring influence on today’s cinematic and digital fantasy landscapes.”

“Chagoya limits his use of the Western written word, instead favoring pictorial signifiers combined with the glyph-based syllabaries of the Mitzec-Zapotec, Nahua (of whom the Aztec were members), and Maya cultures. The books are also printed on amate (a traditional Pre-Columbian paper made of banana fibers) and folded in the traditional accordion style. Within these parameters, the artist sets out epic cultural exchanges in which he “cannibalizes” Western culture in the same way that traditional Mesoamerican cultures have been appropriated into contemporary Mexican and U.S. culture.” —Sarah Kirk Hanley (Art in Print January/February 2012)

Chagoya writes, “My artwork is a visual reflection on various, and often opposite, cultural realities that I have experienced during my life, from growing up in Mexico, living a couple of times in France, and becoming a citizen of this country in the year 2000 after being a permanent resident living in the Bay area for 20 years. I integrate diverse elements: from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography, ethnic stereotypes, ideological propaganda from various times and places, American popular culture, etc.”

Sir John William Fortescue (1859-1933), The Story of a Red-Deer ([Newtown, Montgomeryshire] : Gregynog Press, 1935). Copy 12 of 250. Bound in gilt-decorated full morocco by George Fisher at the Gregynog Press Bindery. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0129Q

When George Fisher (1879-1970) went to work for Rivière Bindery in London, he chose to be a finisher, tooling the colored leather on hundreds of books. In 1924, Fisher moved to Wales to be chief binder at Gregynog Press. From that time forward, the first 20 or 25 books in each edition were given superb decorative bindings by Fisher. When the press was closed in 1940, Fisher stayed on alone for another five years to finish the work on each volume. Princeton University holds 30 of the 42 books published by Gregynog Press.

The central figure of this Rowlandson satire is King George III (1738-1820) in the guise of Roger Bacon (1214?-1294). Bacon was an English friar and practicing alchemist. After his death, Bacon gained a reputation as a sorcerer thanks to the Renaissance publication The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon (earliest extant edition: London, G. Purslowe, 1627; available online).

The story was turned into the Elizabethan drama, The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, in which Bacon’s “brazen head” would magically answer any questions put to it. This print shows King George with Bacon’s “brazen head,” wearing his cape and waving his two magic wands.

Bacon wrote a three-part Opus (Majus, Minus, and Terilium), while King George creates three separate visions, each with a different government structure. In March of 1784, King George actually did dissolve Parliament and change the structure of the British government. The new Ministry is being led down the back stairs by a little devil.

James Joyce passed away in 1941. Under the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the author’s copyright lasted throughout their life and for fifty years thereafter. The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by twenty years, matching the updated European laws now also requiring seventy years.

It is now seventy years after Joyce’s death and the copyright on works produced within his lifetime has expired. A symposium will be held in Dublin this June to rethink Joyce’s writings and the new challenges presented by open access to his work. See: http://www.jamesjoyce2012.ie/index.html. This includes the publication, adaptation, and performance of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake and his only play, Exiles.

Graphic Arts holds a number of Joyce portraits and caricatures including these (copyright still with the artist):

The Nobel Prize winning novelist Günter Grass (born 1927) is also a respected visual artist. Before the publication of his most famous novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959) Grass studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then, at the Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts). Biographies describe his academic career as “a stonemason’s education.”

In 1956, to accompany his first book of poetry (his first publication), Grass designed lithographs to be interspersed between the poems and for the paper wrapper. Martin Esslin writes, “It is hard to tell whether the poems are there to illustrate the drawings, or the drawings to illustrate the poems.”

Panelists:
Douglas Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Kevin McCloskey, Professor of Communication Design, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Stanley Katz, moderator, Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, with special thanks to Karin Trainer and the Princeton University Library for the loan of artwork. For directions and gallery hours, call 609-497-2441. http://wws.princeton.edu/bernstein/

In his Conversations on Engraving, Timothy Cole wrote, “Deeper and more vital questions now confronted the engraver than ever perplexed the masters of earlier schools. A certain orchestration of color was demanded…all involving a more subtle sense of tonal gradations and a completer apprehension of values than was ever displayed by the old school.” (GAX NE 1000.C67)

Cole’s answer to this was to develop an expertise in photoxylography (a description of which was posted earlier). Basically this meant developing the photographic negative on the block and carving through it.

Princeton is fortunate to not only own Cole’s wood engraved prints but also his blocks. Above is an example of a photoxylographic block.

You will notice that the print is larger than the printing block. Because the image began with a photographic negative, which could be made in any size, several printing plates could be prepared in different sizes. This block is made for a cabinet card and the print is larger so it would be suitable for framing.

Even the slightest visual aspects of a poem seem to be coming to an end with digital delivery. Here is a selection from Prof. Paul Muldoon’s poem in the current Times Literary Supplement paper version and then, two digital options:

Barrage Balloons, Buck Alec, Bird Flu and You

~Paul Muldoon

there’s no denying a rooster
will put most of us in a flooster
while the pig that turns out to be less pig than ham
is every bit as alarming. Am I right in thinking that’s meant to be a ram
in a ferraiolo cape?
Hasn’t the ewe with scrapie got herself into a scrape?

TLS e-paper (complete poem in one paragraph):

…potato-moth. On Cave Hill, meanwhile, the hunt was on and the time was ripe for the limer-hounds to revert to type. Though you may dismiss as utter tosh my theory this gung-ho stallion’s by Bacon out of Bosch, there’s no denying a rooster will put most of us in a flooster while the pig that turns out to be less pig than ham is every bit as alarming. Am I right in thinking that’s meant to be a ram in a ferraiolo cape? Hasn’t the ewe with scrapie got herself into a scrape? I don’t suppose the moorland streams over which the huntsmen ride roughshod and the puddles through which their horses plod will give rise to enough salmon to fertilize the soil and stave off another famine. I hadn’t seen the connection between “spade”…

Factiva, journal delivery service (poem in several paragraphs):

…ripe for the limer-hounds to revert to type.

Though you may dismiss as utter tosh my theory this gung-ho stallion’s by Bacon out of Bosch, there’s no denying a rooster will put most of us in a flooster while the pig that turns out to be less pig than ham is every bit as alarming. Am I right in thinking that’s meant to be a ram in a ferraiolo cape? Hasn’t the ewe with scrapie got herself into a scrape? I don’t suppose the moorland streams over which the huntsmen ride roughshod and the puddles through which their horses plod will give rise to enough salmon to fertilize the soil and stave off another famine. I hadn’t seen the connection between “spade” and “spud” and “quid” and “cud” till I noticed the mouth of an Indian elephant from the same troupe the film-makers fitted with “African” ears and tusks was stained with nettle soup.

“I started work on Dero Abecedarius in mid-July 2001,” writes the artist Klaus-Peter Dencker. “…it develops alphabetically and uses New York’s Statue of Liberty as a primary motif. Dero presents the statue, a sort of public-relations symbol, in several variations. This allows me to explore the theme of freedom—poetically and theoretically—as it relates to the somewhat absurd representations of it that abound in consumer culture.”

“Within this work are personal experiences of many visits to the USA and the absurd idea, that a letter has its own meaning/importance. The ABC as an own sign-world and as an example for the dealing with seeming/apparent unliberties and so called rules. I work on the sequences usually by making first all collages on the pages, then the text-elements and finally a follow-up of a few corrections in the existing collages.”

This special edition is published by Redfoxpress, founded in 2000 by the Belgium artist Francis Van Maele. In 2002, he moved to Ireland and settled on Achill Island, along the cliffs of County Mayo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. To learn more, see www.redfoxpress.com

Here are two French title pages with relief prints, one with the publisher’s device printed from wood and one printed from a metal plate. They each display a rose bush, two gryphons, and a dog. The woodcut includes the motto: A l’aventure (Adventure) and the metalcut has the text: A l’aventure tout vient a ponit [point] qui peut atendre (Adventure, all things come to him who waits).

Renouard tells us that Denis Roce or Rosse (flourished 1490-1517) was a printer, publisher, and binder. He worked at the sign of St Martin on the Rue St-Jacques where he published many books on his own and in association with other printers.

Princeton University Library does not, unfortunately, hold a complete copy of Hortus Floridus (A Garden of Flowers) engraved from 1614-16 by Crispijn de Passe, the Younger (ca. 1597-ca. 1670). This hand-colored title page and plate turned up in a collection of book leaves. The original book was published in five parts; the first four corresponding to the four seasons and the fifth labeled “Altera pars horti floridi.” Each section has engraved botanical images with letterpress Latin descriptions on facing pages. Crispijn’s brothers Simon and Willem helped in the production of the plates.

In the study The Hortus Floridus of Crispijn Vande Pas the Younger, Spencer Savage attempted to collate the leaves and compare the states of the engraved plates for every copy he could locate. Pagination varies from 175 to 200 leaves bound in an oblong-quarto but beyond that, the complex bibliography remains unsolved. He concludes “the production of the book was … of the nature of a continuous process.”

The consistent title page, shown above, is framed with figures representing the Sun and the Moon, holding up a curtain on which are medallion portraits of two celebrated botanists, Rembertus Dodonaeus (Rembert Dodoens, 1517-1585) and Carolus Clusius (1526-1609).

From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, coronations, marriages, and other royal occasions were celebrated with a triumphal entry or parade into the city. According to Les fêtes de la Renaissance (Firestone GT3930 .J16), Charles V (1500-1558) held no less than five triumphal entries in 1529, 1533, 1536, 1542, and 1548 during the Habsburg consolidation.

In a 1525 entry in his diary, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) commented on one of Charles V’s entry marches and (rough translation) how the king was received with a costly triumph, how there was music and great rejoicing, and beautiful young maidens, whose like I have never seen. 350 years later, Austrian artist Hans Makart not only painted the maidens accompanying Charles V “clothed in little more than pearls,” but also included Dürer in the crowd.

Makart’s architectural fantasies are often compared with the operas of Richard Wagner, because of the artists’ shared belief in a Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art. Makart’s painting was reproduced in various printed forms throughout Europe and the United States. The naked women led to censorship of the image through the Comstock Act and assured its widespread popularity in America.